Week 30 Update: Saws, silhouettes and sounds

Moving saws. They now follow neighboring indestructible tiles like a track, then reverse course. This is very visible in level 3, where they’re a main obstacle:

Level 3! With this level I’ve tried segmenting the screen vertically into thirds using the indestructible tiles. The idea is to promote different fighting styles from the first level (mostly jumping around small platforms, with small encounters all over, but fighting localized in center bottom of the level) and the second level (segmented horizontally into an upper area and lower area, with fighting quite localized to each area as well). I’ve noticed during playtests that players don’t usually destroy tiles that much – they’re more busy shooting at each other and evading shots – so it’s OK to leave destructible tiles liberally between the indestructible ones. However, with the presence of those platforms in the middle of the level, players tend to play in the top half of the screen. I might try a sort of tunneling spawn in order to get players to the lower half of the screen. So still experimenting with level 3.

Different avatar silhouettes. THE MISSION can be difficult to “read”, due to the monochromatic aesthetic. I asked a colorblind colleague how I could improve the readability of the game, and he suggested giving the avatars details to help distinguish them. Here is what I came up with. I would like to stick to the humanoid body template, but if it isn’t enough, then I will explore others. I like that one that looks like a shark :)

Sound and music issues. I dedicated most of the weekend to fixing both sounds and music. Currently, neither is working well. The sound effects are delayed by maybe 250 milliseconds, which is significant. I’ve tried all sorts of solutions, but have gotten nowhere. Music is also being difficult, with seamless looping not working. I’ve triple-checked the file, and it should loop seamlessly properly. I have tried several different implementations for looping music, so I don’t know what the problem is. But I will figure it out!